ON GOLF BOOKS AND GOLF BALLS
In the year 1886 I perpetrated a book on golf. The only excuse to be
made for it is that which was offered in another famous instance, that
"it was a very little one." It was a much more notorious thing in those
days to write a book about golf than it is now, for who is there now who
has not done so? But in that golden age the whole bibliography of the
game was comprised, I think, in four volumes--_Golf, a Royal and Ancient
Game_, by that gallant old warrior at the game, Mr. Robert Clark;
Stewart's _Golfiana Miscellanea_; and two small didactic treatises, the
one by Chambers and the other by Forgan. I had a great many compliments
paid me on my little book, _Hints on Golf_, when it first came out. I
sent the manuscript to Mr. "Bill" Blackwood, and he eagerly consented to
publish it, "for," he wrote, "I am sure there must be something in that
book. Ever since I read it I have been trying to play according to its
advice, and the result is that I've entirely lost any little idea of the
game I ever had." That was gratifying praise, and an edition or two was
soon sold out. Then it occurred to me to illustrate its wisdom with
figures in single lines. A little later I was dancing with a young lady
I had just been introduced to in London and asked her whether she
played golf and she replied, "Oh, yes, we all play, and we learn out of
a most idiotic little book we've got." "Ah, yes," I said, "is it a
little book with single line figures illustrating it?" "Yes, yes," she
said eagerly. "That's it. Do you know it?" "A little," I replied.
One remark in the book took the popular fancy--that "Golf is not
agriculture." It was made to point the moral that the golfer should
replace his divots. But the only passage that seems to me at all worth
quoting at length, although I did write the whole book myself, is one
which illustrates the temporary and historical importance of a
controversy which is entirely forgotten now. The passage is Number I. of
"The Miseries of Golf," and runs thus:--
"Discovering, as you walk down to the tee, to start a foursome, that
your partner has never in his life played a round with a 'putty'
(eclipse) ball, while you yourself know that you cannot play within one
half of your game with a 'gutty' (gutta-percha) ball."
All through the early eighties a good deal of experimenting had been
going on with the view of discovering a substitute for gutta-percha for
the golf ball. When I first went to St. Andrews, Commander Stewart was
there, having just produced his "Stewart Patent" balls. They were of
some composition, and were filled with steel filings. They had some
merits, but were very heavy. All golf balls used to be numbered then: 27
and 28 were the usual sizes, supposed to signify the weight in drachms,
and I remember Logan White telling Commander Stewart, "We tried weighing
your balls yesterday. We put a 27 of yours in one side of the balance
and we had to put a 28 gutty and the coal-scuttle in the other, to make
it level." Slight exaggeration, but pointing towards a truth!
It was the fault of these balls that they were too heavy. Then some firm
in Edinburgh produced a ball called the Eclipse, and after several
modifications they put out a ball that had distinct qualities of its
own, in some points superior to gutta-percha balls. They would not carry
so well--they were dead, and with wonderfully little resilience when
dropped on a stone--soft, so that a finger and thumb squeeze could
compress them sensibly, but the compression came out again. That was one
of the merits of this ball, which inevitably--its qualities being such
as they were--received the nickname of "putty," to rhyme pleasantly with
"gutty": it would come out again, resuming its spherical shape without
any disturbance of contour, even after the most desperate hammering on
the head with an iron. It was indestructible. Then it was a wonderful
ball for keeping its line on the putting green--far the best putting
ball that ever has come into being during the half-century or so of golf
that I have known. But the quality, which perhaps was its highest
virtue, was that it did not go off the line nearly as much as the gutty
when pulled or sliced. I used to play with a "putty," as a rule, when I
played against Old Tom. The old man hated the ball, as indeed did most
of the professionals. Trade reasons weighed heavily with many of them,
but I do not think that the old man was commercial-minded enough for
these to have the slightest effect with him. He might have made a large
fortune had he possessed but a little more of this spirit, but it was in
his utter freedom from it that much of his charm consisted. Still he
cordially hated "the potty," as he called it. Of course it was possible
to pull or slice the putty, if you played badly enough, though it did
not take the cut nearly as freely as the gutty, and whenever I pulled or
sliced one of them to perdition the old man's delight knew no bounds.
The fun would come twinkling out of his eyes under their shaggy brows
and he would say, "Eh, they potties--I thocht they potties never gaed
aff the line."
Willie Fernie was the only one of the professionals who ever
condescended much to them, and I have been playing with him when he used
a putty going out at St. Andrews, in the teeth of the wind, and then
took a gutty coming home down wind. But he did not make much of it. The
two balls required such a very different touch for the short game that
it was very difficult to go from one to the other--it is in that that
the point lies of the above quotation from my "idiotic little book." But
Willie Fernie was a man of infinite ingenuity. The ball, evidently from
what I have said of it, was a fine ball against the wind--it kept so low
and so straight. On hard ground it would make up in its run for its loss
in carry, and therefore it was a better ball on the flatter than on the
more mountainous links. But in this account of its qualities, I have
also indicated its defects. Running as it did when it pitched, it was an
impossible ball to stop on the green off a lofted shot; and just as it
would not take much cut, so as to go far to right or left when heeled or
toed, so it would not take a cut when one purposely tried to put a cut
on to stop it.
On the whole I liked the ball. It was very economical, because it would
last for ever and because its soft substance did not inflict such damage
on the clubs as the hard "gutty." I won both the first two amateur
championships with a putty ball. I do not mean that I used the same ball
in each. But Andy Stuart had a putty ball with which--the same identical
ball--he won three St. Andrews' medals. The great argument against them
was the difficulty aforesaid of stopping them off the pitch. That, and
their lack of carry, were their weak points: their straight travel,
especially off the putter, was their strong point. And then, all at
once, the manufacturers began to make them less good. Just what happened
I never knew. I think that they changed the mixture in order to get them
harder, and, so, more like the "gutties"; but whatever the reason, the
effect was that they lost much of their merits and never overcame their
defects. Result--exit the putty ball towards the end of the eighties,
and the gutty holding the market until the Americans sent us what at
first were called Haskells; which is another and more modern story.
I had written, at the commencement of my little book, that I had seen a
recent advertisement of an outfitting firm, "The Game of Golf Complete,
in a Box." It suggested a _multum in parvo_. I went on to say, "if
anyone would only write us 'The Art of Golf, complete, in a Book'--why,
what more could be left to wish for?" But I added, "I am afraid no one
will ever be quite bold enough to attempt that." And hardly were those
words published before out came Sir Walter Simpson, greatly daring, with
a book actually called _The Art of Golf_. He did not add "complete, in a
Book"; but no doubt that is how he meant it. And an admirably witty and
humorous book it was, and is. Its wit and humour abide with us. Just
what value it ever had as an education in the art I hardly know. Walter
Simpson, poor fellow (he died while comparatively a young man), never
was a first-class golfer, though he was a first-class companion for a
round. We who were pleased to rate ourselves the best of the amateurs
could give him about a third, and there were many strokes in the game of
which he had no idea, but his book, like himself, is excellent company.
Quite a modern book, having the same title (which is rather a pity), has
come out lately, by Joshua Taylor, the champion's brother. I will
refrain from comparisons. But I suppose that at the date I am writing
of, the world, for the time being, had enough of golf literature, for I
cannot think of any work in book form on the great subject until the
Badminton Golf Volume, in 1890; and I remember an article of Professor
Tait's written in the late eighties in which he speaks of "the
magnificent Clark, the voluminous Simpson and the sardonic Hutchinson,"
with the suggestion that these three virtually comprised the whole of
the bibliography of golf as generally known to the public. How far pens
have travelled over how many of the reams of the paper so appropriately
termed foolscap in the quarter of a century or so since, we may consider
with much amazement--and here am I still piling up the leagues!